


Across the Universe

by tiggeryumyum



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-02 15:58:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15799824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiggeryumyum/pseuds/tiggeryumyum
Summary: Kuroo follows his dreams to space and leaves Yaku on earth, and they will never, ever see each other again. Probably.Forkuroyakuweekend2018!





	1. Chapter One

There aren’t any tears their last night together, and there’s no mention of what's coming tomorrow. 

They fill the evening with aggressively upbeat conversation, drinks, a movie, and then finally, destructive sex. 

"Fuck, fuck, yes, _fuck_." Hungry hips rolling, the bed creaking from the force, but none of it does anything to change the fact that the bedroom closet is half empty. The suitcases packed beside the door. A single toothbrush left alone on the bathroom sink, the boxes and bags of belongings for donation. 

It helps them pretend, though, and exhausts them enough to put them to sleep.

It's their last morning together when it gives.

"Please don't go."

"Yaku..."

"Shit."

"Don't cry. Please."

"I'm not," Yaku's voice warbles, and breaks. Then, whispered, hopeless. "Please don't go."

Kuroo feels his own eyes stinging as he watches Yaku's face crumple, then turn to hide into the pillow. 

"I'm sorry," Kuroo whispers back.

The strength in Yaku's arms around his neck is the kind born from fear. A last, desperate, futile attempt to stop the motion of the universe with his tiny mortal hands, and Kuroo holds him with the same futile, suffocating pressure. 

Kuroo has been dreaming of this since he was ten years old. Selected for his prodigious abilities in mainstream schools, he was screened, evaluated, invited to summer camps, and enrolled in academies of the brightest minds in the nation. Kuroo's intelligence and expertise in space exploration has labeled him an essential crewman for the _UEA Chiisana Kyojin_ project, which has the goal of launching into space, and continuing on from there.

In thirteen hours, Kuroo will be leaving planet earth, and he will not be coming back. 

This was not a surprise. Both Kuroo and Yaku knew what Kuroo's work entailed. Some crew on _Chiisana Kyojin_ are married, even, with children, who will become teenagers, then adults, then elderly, then dead, while their mother or father speeds further away from the planet as fast as they possibly can, each and every second.

In the future there will be more sophisticated attempts, and it's honestly not even that far away. Ships will be able to leave to explore the galaxy with the realistic expectation of getting where they need to go in mere years or decades, instead of a century, and even returning when they're finished. But for that to happen, they need to test the technology. They need practical exploration, to thrust blindly into the unknown, where no promises can be made about what will happen to them there, and Kuroo is part of that initial stab into darkness. 

Kuroo received his official orders to report on board the _Chiisana Kyojin_ two years ago, and Yaku has held it together this entire time. 

Until this moment, Kuroo would have said that it wouldn't have mattered what happened on heaven or earth, he was going to get on that ship. But watching the depth of Yaku's pain, just now, just getting a glimpse of it for just a _moment_ is slicing into Kuroo's core and he knows, he wouldn't have withstood a year of this. If Yaku had just been a little bit weaker. Begged Kuroo to stay just a little bit sooner... 

It's too late, now. 

There's still hours before Kuroo's expected to report in, so he rolls Yaku over, and they fuck again. 

He wants something passionate, something worth a memory, but it's tentative and fumbling. He realizes, once deep inside Yaku's body, that really, all he wanted was to be as close as he possibly can. Both arms wrapping around Yaku's back, chin on Yaku's shoulder, and he just wants to lay like this, as long as he'll be allowed, but his own drive and the way Yaku moves against him has him pushing into Yaku's body with stuttered, needy thrusts. He ends up apologizing as he comes, over and over. "Sorry. I'm - shit. Yakkun, I'm sorry."

"Sh-shut up," Yaku says, nails digging into Kuroo's shoulder, face flushed, cheeks wet again. They make the same noise of pain when Kuroo pulls out, though the slide is easy and slick after all the activity of last night and this morning.

Kuroo desperately wants to say lies, very nice ones, about how he'll certainly be coming back one day, they'll be together again, but he knows that would only be cruel. Yaku is not the type to take comfort in a fantasy, and Kuroo will not taunt him with an outcome so unlikely. 

"I don't know how I'm going to wake up tomorrow," Yaku says, voice suddenly hollow, expression blank as he stares past Kuroo's shoulder. 

Kuroo's never seen him like this, so vulnerable, and maybe the only reason he's getting this chance now is because this is the last time they'll see each other. Nothing left to lose. 

"You'll do better than I will," Kuroo says.

"Bullshit," Yaku says. "You'll be in cryo. And even when you're awake, you'll have your mission, and your ship and – space."

Yaku will have their old apartment. 

The shower that they made no less than six awkward attempts to fuck in, both of them stubbornly refusing to give up until they got cramps and the water ran cold, the deck they made up constellations in the winter night sky, and the couch they fell asleep on together

A kind of hell, honestly. 

"I'm sorry," Kuroo says again. It does as much good as all the other times he said it: none at all. 

Everything to Kuroo's name on this planet earth are in the two suitcases beside the door, and the outfit he'd laid out the night before. The pajamas he leaves on the bedroom floor, the mostly empty bottle of shampoo in the bathroom, any random book or movie or gadget forgotten or lost but found again, are bequeathed to Yaku by default. 

Yaku watches him get dressed from the bed. He's sitting up, glaring, eyes red, lower half of his face hidden by the pillow he's holding to his chest. 

Kuroo waits until he's got everything but his shoes on.

"Still coming?" he asks, because it's entirely possible Yaku's changed his mind.

Yaku glares harder for a moment, sniffling. Then he rolls out of bed, and yanks on something to wear. 

They drive to the station with the windows down, and the cool air on their faces has a sobering effect. They end up laughing about something on the drive, but later, Kuroo can't remember what. Something on the radio, maybe. 

Traffic is heavy for this early hour, and it only gets worse as they approach the station, which is weird until Kuroo remembers: there's going to be a launch today.

Using Kuroo's badge, Yaku's able to drive past the crowded visitor areas of the station, filled with reporters and spectators and school buses, gathering to witness the historic moment. 

They park in the employee ramp, Yaku turns off the engine, then sits there, staring down, hands in his lap.

It feels like he wants to say something, so Kuroo waits. But nothing comes.

Kuroo has to leave. Has to report in, start prepping for launch, but all he can do is stare at Yaku's hands, too, curling slightly. He could be asleep, there doesn't seem to be any tension in his body and it's terrifying because it means he's accepted this defeat, and in Kuroo's mind, Yaku never gives up any fight. 

"You pain in the ass," Yaku finally hisses out, voice thick with tears and snot again. He reaches out, grabs Kuroo by the front of the shirt, drags him in for another kiss.

They probably say one or two things after that, some kind of pleasantry. Yaku likely helped him pull his luggage out of the trunk. Maybe even exchanged _I love yous_ , but this is where Kuroo's memories of earth end: Yaku's shaking lips on his. 

~

"We'll be using half of _Chiisana Kyojin's_ fuel on the initial launch," Akaashi says. "Then a quarter of that when we turn around and launch back toward earth. That gives us a fourth of the fuel to ration for life support. A tenth of that will be going to the cryosystem. Every single resource anyone uses on board has to be justified."

Kuroo frowns in agreement, like he has every other time he's heard this speech, but privately does not think anyone is planning to save anything for the trip home. 

The flight to the edge of Sol's system will take fourteen months, and they'll be awake, then. They'll be manning _Chiisana Kyojin_ like any other exploratory mission into space, reporting back in with updates, sending and receiving communications to the loved ones they've left behind.

Once out of the system, to save energy, the communication will be reduced to a single batch of information, pulsing out of _Chiisana Kyojin_ once an hour, across the galaxy, where it will eventually land at the station on earth for review. 

At that point they'll have about six more months to go, give or take – Kenma says it'll be one hundred sixty-two days, four hours, and three minutes – before they come within orbit of the slipstream. 

Kenma is a statistics wunderkind, and miserably unfit for the mission. He's passed out during every single launch simulation and spent half the year in zero gravity vomiting before a combination of medication and exposure finally calmed his twitching gut. There were several meetings that grew heated and hostile about whether or not to he should be on board at all, but the ultimate decision was that it's both a risk to leave him behind, and a risk to have him on board, but the latter risk was slightly less negligible. 

He's in pod 343, Kuroo's in 342. 

Once _Chiisana Kyojin_ lines up with the slipstream as best they can, they will be frozen inside the cryognic system of the ship for an estimate of 25 years, if everything goes as it should. They'll be frozen up to 800 years if it doesn't. This is when the ship will run out of energy to sustain life support systems. Theoretically, of course, there's always the possibility that they'll miss completely, get dragged off course, and eventually fall into the orbit of a star or black hole, drifting quietly, gently to their gruesome demise. 

Kenma says the odds of them ever seeing earth again is one in sixty thousand. 

Kenma says the odds of them seeing earth again while anyone they know is still alive is one in four hundred million. Kenma says the odds of them making it through the slipstream is one in four, but the odds of getting in there in the first place is one in six hundred.

Kuroo used to ask about these odds all the time, because he was impressed with how Kenma's mind worked and liked seeing him tested to absurd limits – _What are the odds that we'll be drinking Starbucks again?_ – but in the past three years his questions have slowed, and stopped completely. There's only so many ways he can stomach hearing there's one in zero chance of ever, _ever_ seeing Yaku again.

"Well. Not zero," Kenma says. "It's never zero."

~

Kuroo's first love is the night sky. The huge, unknowable expanse of it. As a child Kuroo was captivated by mysteries, puzzles, and the night sky, the universe, was an unending, eternal question, a riddle that could not be answered, only asked, and the idea of traveling through it, immersing himself in it, was like a physical pull. The night sky is temptation Kuroo's spent his entire life admiring from a distance, waiting impatiently for the moment he'd be able to reach out and touch.

"Ya~ku." 

"What?"

 _Eternal night._ Kuroo has a meeting agenda in front of him which lists everyone invited, and that includes _Yaku Morisuke_. He underlines each character in Yaku's name, then circles _night_ , then _eternal_ , then both of them at once, and doodling stars around that.

Kuroo grins up at him. "Nice name."

Yaku glares, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Kuroo is one of the nerds interning at the station, and nerds can really be some of the meanest bullies.

 _Cable repair men_ is what they've taken to calling the RF engineers brought in to consult in the communications phase of development for _Chiisana Kyojin_. The scientists at the station regularly act superior and smug whenever they come in, second guessing their suggestions and being all around assholes. 

Yaku is one of the RF interns, and if one of the other nerds complimented Yaku on his name, it would be sarcastic, and something rude would surely follow.

Kuroo meant it, though. He's seen Yaku around before, seen him talk in meetings, found him cute and sharp and funny, but didn't know his name. _An eternal night_ , Kuroo glances down at the characters again as the meeting starts around them, the conference table filled with the actual scientists and engineers and generals, while the interns at the end of the table take notes, or daydream about successfully asking the RF intern across from them to coffee, or drinks, or a club. To his apartment. To drink hot chocolate on a blanket laid out in a field during a meteor shower – 

"And we've yet to seriously account for the inevitable overload of the power-grid."

"I mentioned that last week," Yaku says. The stunned silence that follows pulls Kuroo's attention back to the moment. Yaku is, shamelessly, correcting the highest ranking general in the room. "And I said we can work around it with an impedance matching network."

"Well. I said _seriously_ ," the general sputters after a beat, trying to save face. "I'm sure your option is a good one, but we've yet to discuss if it's a realistic solution."

Yaku crosses his arms, and he doesn't look angry, or smug – his expression is carefully impassive, like the general, someone several decades older, with the power to ban Yaku from the project, and even stepping foot at the station, is a bratty child he's trying not to lose his patience with. 

The conversation shifts gears, and one of the RF engineers quickly pulls Yaku from the room, and Kuroo stares after, thunderstruck. 

As the plans for the ship start to grow more concrete, and actual limitations on their power sources start to be underlined in concerning red, the station tentatively considers doing away with external transmission capabilities at all. They'll be out of earth's range within thirty years, and it's not as if they'll be awake, or have anyone to even contact beyond that, but Kuroo lobbies hard for it, even at the cost of other systems, partly because the idea of flying blind, mute, and deaf into space is a little terrifying, and also because he needs a little more time to work up the courage to ask Yaku out. 

~

 **Me** :  
What if I make it back to earth  
and it's been like 60 years  
and you're 80

 **Yaku** :  
eh  
i'll hook you up with my grandson

 **Me** :  
Don't try to pawn me off on some second rate yaku  
I want the original 

**Yaku** :  
I'm not going to wait for you, Kuroo.

 **Me** :  
I know.

 **Yaku** :  
I can't 

**Me** :  
I was joking  
well  
I'll still want to see you at least  
even if you're 100  
but i'll be a gentleman.  
We're exiting sol now  
So  
This is the last thing I'll get to say to you  
You're the best thing on planet earth and I'll miss you  
I miss you  
I love you  
I don't think I really understand yet that this is goodbye  
Please live the best life you can  
Goodbye

~

"Something wrong?"

Tsukishima is the youngest crewman on board, and they didn't want to take him because of that, but he volunteered, and is a prodigy of cryonics. They couldn't really turn down the offer. 

Kuroo remembers several heated arguments about how to handle the system's wiring. The details of it are well above Kuroo's head, though he knew Tsukishima had made an argument for adjusting the reserve flows direction, and been overruled repeatedly. Now, the control panel is popped open, Tsukishima's got a screwdriver between his teeth, fingers deep in the wires. He stares at Kuroo with round, guilty eyes, then recovers, taking the screw driver out of his mouth and glares. 

"If they want to court-martial me in a hundred years, they can try," Tsukishima says. "But I'm the one being frozen up here, so I want to do it on my terms."

He's defensive, anxious. Scared that Kuroo will tell. 

"No one's getting court-martial over some minor repairs," Kuroo says, scratching his neck as he looks the other way. Tsukishima lets out a tight huff of relief, then bends back down and finishes the rewiring. 

"You'd better hurry," Kuroo says. "We're reporting in at our pods in five minutes."

"Already done," Tsukishima says, closing the panel. 

Cryogenics is actually a bit of a misnomer for they system on _Chiisana Kyojin_. Cold is a part of the process, but warmth is, too. 

Their bodies will be cooled, slowed down until the heart completes one beat every week or month. Then, to ensure that nothing's gone wrong, and the bodies or brains inside haven't been damaged, every twenty years or so, they will be warmed again, slowly, their heart rate rising to maybe two or three a minute.

In those brief windows of warmth, it will be theoretically possible to dream. Many who have undergone the process before have even claimed to remember their dreams in this state, but the window of time allotted is tiny. Kuroo has a hard time believing anyone's brain gathering itself enough to complete an entire REM cycle under these circumstances. 

He does not expect to dream, these next sixty years. Still, he taps on the glass of his pod once it comes down, until Kenma glances over.

"Sweet dreams!" Kuroo says, and Kenma rolls his eyes, then mouths it back.

~

"Oi, Yakkun. What are we having for lunch?"

Yaku's facing the window, and does not realize Kuroo can see his expression reflected in the glass. He gives a short smile, biting his lip, before turning around, straight faced.

 _Oh,_ Kuroo realizes, as Yaku shrugs and says he doesn't particularly care either way, as though bored by the question, and irritated by Kuroo's presence. _He likes me._

~

"This line across your palm, here. Look how long that is. It means you're stubborn."

"Mmm."

"This one – it's shorter than it should be. It means you should go along with your beloved boyfriend's movie choices more often."

"Right."

"This line here – well, this is your height line – _ow!_ " Kuroo rubs the back of his head.

"Fuck off," Yaku says, scowling, holding his own hand defensively.

They sit side by side in silence, waiting in the lobby of a pizza place for an order that was supposed to be ready ten minutes ago. After another minute of waiting, Kuroo reaches for Yaku's hand again. Reluctantly, suspiciously, Yaku allows him to take it. Kuroo brings it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to the back. 

"Sorry."

Yaku frowns tightly, looking away. Kuroo keeps holding his hand, smiling, because that's essentially forgiveness Yaku's too proud to say out loud. 

~

"My apartment doesn't allow pets," Yaku says, with resigned disappointment as they pass a pair of street cats resting on a stone fence.

"Mine does," Kuroo brags.

"A lot of good that does me."

"You know," Kuroo says, scratching under a white, fluffy chin, feeling the steady rattle of its purr against his fingers. "It actually could if you moved in with me."

Yaku looks over sharply, as though Kuroo announced he was planning to stab him in his sleep tonight and piss on the remains: mildly fearful disgust. Kuroo resists the defensive, hurt urge to take the invitation back, because he's learned by now, a lot of what appears to be Yaku's disinterest is actual insecurity. He keeps petting the cat, forcing himself to stay patient and calm into the silence. 

"It could," Yaku finally allows, voice surprisingly timid. 

~

"Tetsurou," Yaku says, voice quiet and gentle. "Do you want to wake up? Or keep sleeping?"

Yaku's hand is in Kuroo's hair, petting through it slowly. He's never this sweet when Kuroo is awake enough to do something about it, and he lets out a weak, shaky little whine at how unfair this is.

"Tetsurou," Yaku laughs softly, amused. "You said you didn't want to waste your day off, remember?"

Kuroo whines again. He wants to sleep, but he also wants to keep being petted by Yaku, and knows he'll have to be awake in order to enjoy it. 

"Can't decide?" Yaku asks, still sounding amused. He shuffles around, until Kuroo's head is in his lap. 

The morning stretches on in warm quiet. Above him, Yaku reads a crime novel, fingers combing through Kuroo's hair just enough to keep him awake, and Kuroo sighs, unable to remember a time in his life he ever felt this content.

~

Four hundred years later, Kuroo wakes up.

The insides of the pod show him the date: _2601_.

He stares, unable to process it. _Wrong_ , is the only thought he can really manage, and it repeats. Something went _wrong_ and he can feel it even in his stiff muscles - his skin, which feels tight, and is a warning that the cryosystem malfunctioned – the expected side effects of cryonics is feeling limp and loopy. Kuroo's keyed up, anxious and delirious by the time the pod door opens with a hiss. 

This should be synchronized, every pod opening in time, just like how they closed in time, but Kuroo can tell by the faint sound, there's not nearly enough pods opening. 

He looks to his right and sees the horrifying, heart stopping sight of glass that should be transparent, fogged and frosted white. Kenma's pod. Kuroo looks close and can barely make out the top of his head. 

Kuroo stares at the malfunctioning pod, and stares at it, and can't look away until he hears a strangled sob.

Tsukishima, crouched in the corner of the hall, bathed in the pale blue light of the pods, still frozen around them.

"Hey," Kuroo says, walking over. 

Tsukishima looks up in fear, like he thinks Kuroo will lash out.

His brain is still four steps behind, he doesn't feel right in his own skin and he can't string together a coherent thought except he wants Tsukishima to stop crying. It's not alright, really. Tsukishima didn't do nothing wrong, and Kuroo can't forgive it because it's not his life. There's nothing he can say, so he just drags Tsukishima's face to his shoulder, and lets him cry there, instead of alone. 

The rest of the pods fared even worse.

It takes about an hour for everyone to stumble out of their pods and wake up, some more delirious than others, a few vomiting. It's all signs of Cryo-toxcity.

"It hit one in every four pods," Akaashi says, his usually quiet, measured voice possessing a strange, unquestionable authority. "We have a fifth of our fuel remaining. We have no food rations to speak of. We missed the slipstream, we're off course, and none of our navigation systems recognize our location."

A deafening silence in a room of over a hundred people. 

"We should eject the dead," Tsukishima says, eyes red, but he's composed himself. "The ship is still devoting resources to keeping their pods frozen and oxygenated."

There's no disagreement. The pods of the dead are the stuff of nightmares – Kenma's malfunctioned, and it's impossible to see the damage, but many of those who actually died ended up with body parts frozen, perfectly preserved, pressed against the glass. Waking up next to that would've probably been enough for Kuroo to vomit, too. 

"The captain is dead. The first officer is dead," Akaashi says. He's the highest ranking personnel alive _Chiisana Kyojin_ , and now the acting captain. "If anyone has any opinions about how the best salvage this, it's an open floor."

"We should return to earth," Kuroo says. 

The room stares at him, looking confused.

"Obviously we're not going to be alive when we get there," Kuroo says. "But the pods might make it that long. The only ones who can help the people inside are on earth."

"If they can even be helped," Shirabu says. 

"Do we have the fuel to make it?" 

"It takes almost no energy to keep flying in a straight line, if we stay at the same speed," Kita says. "If we don't burn too much turning around, and we get the navigation right, we should be able to make it. Especially." He stops. Then sighs, and forces himself to go on. "Especially because life support outside of the pods won't be needed. Not very long."

There's a grim beat of silence.

"If that's the plan we're going with, then eject me out into space too," Goshiki says. "Because I'm not going to starve to death." 

"We haven't made any decisions yet," Akaashi says, quickly, before the heated statement can kick off proper hysterics. "We're not in a rush - " 

"There's an incoming transmission."

The room stops, looking toward Kunimi, who blinks back at them, owlishly. 

"... What?" Akaashi asks.

"It's a standard message. It's - in Japanese," Kunimi says. "It says 'stop.'"

"Stop," Akaashi repeats. 

"Just – stop?"

"A warning… ?"

"It's not an internal message?" Tsukishima asks.

"There's coordinates," Kunimi says. "It's coming from 0.3 lightyears ahead."

This time the room is quiet enough that they all hear the hum and beep of a message.

" _Stop_ ," Kunimi reads out loud. Then he blinks. " _Stop,_ " he reads again. " _You pain in the ass._ "

Kuroo stands up, the adrenaline rush too sudden and powerful not to. 

Everyone stares at his sudden movement, and Kuroo tries to find words that make sense and isn't just _Yaku_ , because it obviously is not Yaku, but there's no way he's going to be able to convince his gut of that. "We should stop."

"This feels like a trap," Tsukishima says, expression cagey. "Something feels off."

"I don't really see how we have any other choice," Akaashi says. 

"At this speed it's going to take everything we have to full stop," Shirabu says. "We're not going to be able to start again."

"We're essentially dead men walking anyway," Kuroo says. "But this does take anyone still in the pod's chance of surviving down to zero."

"Not zero," Akaashi says, softly. "It's never zero."

"Do we put it to a vote, or... ?"

They do, and they decide to stop.


	2. Chapter Two

Kuroo's on the bridge for the full stop. 

In deep space, stopping a ship moving at full speed is one of the most strenuous things you can put its engine through. Resistance is almost non-existent, there's nothing to push off against or into, no gravity to slow their momentum, no tension to work with. 

It's basically a second launch, in the opposite direction, but one that can't be so powerful that it sends the ship moving backward. 

"Ready for the first reverse pulse," Kuroo says, after calculating the exact force needed. "This is going to be a bumpy ride."

"At your discretion, Kuroo," Akaashi says, seated on the very edge of the captain's chair, but after the first heavy jerk from the engine, he's forced to scoot back properly, or be thrown to the floor. "Any response from our hails?"

"Nothing," Kunimi says. "But I could only get an approximate location, I wasn't – " 

A few people on the bridge glance over, and are nearly toppled over by the next rocking pulse, as the ship slows down to half its speed.

"Uh, I – sorry, I didn't – I didn't notice," Kunimi says, looking between Akaashi and the transmission. "The message was dated 2202.03."

"That message – that incoming message we all heard arrive," Akaashi has to grip the sides of the seat to stay upright. Kuroo bites his lip, adjusting his calculations again, accounting for an error in his last thrust. "Was four hundred years old?"

"Yes," Kunimi says.

"Are we still going to full stop??" Kuroo asks.

"I – " Akaashi looks over the bridge. This is only a fraction of the crew who voted to stop, but that doesn't really matter. This is his decision to make, and frankly it's too late to turn back now. He seems to reach this conclusion the same time as Kuroo. "Yes. Keep going, Kuroo."

"Just two more," Kuroo says, fingers flying over the keyboard as he measures out the strength of the next blast, this is when the margin of error gets wider, and he glances over at the other side of the helm, where Kenma could've been sitting, reviewing his work, if he wasn't stiff, frozen and lifeless three floors below. _Four hundred years old_. The part of Kuroo that had been sure it was Yaku reaching out to him feels gutted, and he's annoyed at himself for this reaction. He'd already coped, he'd already settled and accepted the reality of his situation, and all it took was one tiny, impossible, illogical hope to be crushed, and his hands start to shake on the helm. 

_Four hundred years ago_ , if it was Yaku, which was pretty stupid to assume to begin with, he's obviously gone now, and he told Kuroo, anyway – he wasn't going to wait for him.

No one speaks as the next two thrusts shake through the ship. Kuroo stays focused on the numbers on his display, watching them steadily shrink, before stabilizing. 

"Full stop," he announces, switching command back to the captain's chair.

"Nicely done, Kuroo," Akaashi says, but he sounds distracted.

The display windows of the bridge have finally calmed from the steady black smear of the galaxy, giving them a view of their actual surroundings.

They drift, at a lazy pace, across an entirely alien solar system.

Kuroo finds himself on his feet without realizing it. 

There are four planets in view, reddish, yellow, green, then a tiny black dot, with a completely unknown spread of stars behind that. He's seen more outlandish sights, galaxies with three stars in the center, planets made of crystal, but only ever in recreations or photos. 

This is _different_ , and he's _here_ , seeing it with his own eyes, and honestly in this moment Kuroo can't bring himself to wish that he'd done anything different. 

He can feel the stunned, mesmerized silence in the bridge around him and knows the rest of them probably feel the same. 

"Wow," Kuroo laughs, a little brokenly. Alright – maybe a few things he'd change, because he'd do anything for Kenma to be seeing it with him. Yaku – he can practically feel the patronizing pat on the back he'd give Kuroo at the sight. Happy that it made Kuroo happy. There's a reason why Yaku's feet stayed firmly on planet earth.

"Look at that," Shirabu murmurs, pointing toward the closest planet. The ship, reacting to his direction, enhances the landscape of the red surface. There's what has to be an artificial, man made line, cut directly across the landmass, where a rocky terrain meets plant life. "That's terraform."

"If we're – if we're in a system with intelligent life," Goshiki says. "We could get help? We could get fuel, food??"

Akaashi is still staring out the screen with his hand over his mouth, and seems to take a moment to realize that everyone is staring at him for an answer.

"There's a chance," he says. 

"We have an incoming transmission," Kunimi says, and sounds a little more distressed. "Dated this year. Just now."

"What's it say?"

"It's – it's live. It's a request to form – a stream. A live stream," Kunimi stutters out. "They want to talk to us live."

"On screen," Akaashi says, sitting straight, and the silence of the bridge is intense enough to feel like a physical pressure, every eye trained forward in a strange mix of hope and fear.

"Hey."

On screen, the surreal sight of a brightly lit office appears, with a bored looking young man - not Yaku, which Kuroo only realizes after the confusion fades to some pathetic level of disappointment that he was somehow hoping it would be - dark hair spiked high on his head, wearing a jumpsuit with the UEA logo, and the nametag _Kindaichi_. 

"We can't match your ship's ID code in our system. We're going to have to go through this manually before we can give you clearance to land," he says. "What's the name of your ship?"

"... The _UEA Chiisana Kyojin_ ," Akaashi says. 

"Real funny," Kindaichi rolls his eyes. "Who am I talking to?"

"This is acting captain Akaashi," Akaashi says, and you'd have to know him pretty well to hear the anxiety start to actually creep into his voice. "A quarter of our crew was lost, including the primary command team. We launched from Tokyo Station on 2200 and a malfunction set us off course. We're in need of fuel, supplies, and any medical assistance you'd be willing to provide." 

Kindaichi's mouth has been dropping slowly open as Akaashi goes on, and after Akaashi finishes, he continues to stare another moment. 

"Stand by," he says. 

The bridge waits in anxious, terrified silence as their screen switches back to the alien galaxy, waiting for – whatever's going to come next, which could easily include a devastating blast from one of the planets below. 

"Incoming transmission," Kunimi says, a good while later. 

"On screen."

"Hello, Captain Akaashi!" A startlingly good looking man appears on the screen, with a wide, boyish smile. "And the rest of the _Chiisana Kyojin_! I'm Admiral Oikawa with the UEA, and I have to say this is a very welcome surprise."

"Hello," Akaashi says, and clears his throat. "If you're familiar with our situation – "

"Oh, we are very, very familiar. We're sending coordinates now, once you land we'll be able to care for any wounded and get everyone caught up," he grins again. "Welcome back."

~

The planet they’re directed toward is a murky green, and primarily covered in water, which to Kuroo is a bit of a disappointment. 

"What's wrong with it?" Tsukishima asks, catching Kuroo's expression.

"I was hoping the first alien planet I stepped on would be more – alien like," Kuroo frowns down at the stats. 80% water. Breathable oxygen, carbon based life, and so on. Boring.

"You'll have to find one that's not terraformed by humans first then," Tsukishima says. His expression and tone is flat, obviously still haunted by the fate of the cryosystem. Kuroo, again, has to hold in comforting platitudes. It's possible that Tsukishima's last minute adjustments didn't have anything to do with the malfunction, but the odds of that seem slim, too slim for even Kuroo to believe it, and he'd honestly be willing to overlook a lot to do so. 

Instead he sighs, and gives Tsukishima's shoulder a comforting squeeze, which does not seem to do much good.

They enter the earth-like planet's orbit, and a series of foreign codes and instructions are transmitted to the helm. 

“Er,” he mutters, trying to make sense of the gibberish, Apparently the landing process has been completely revamped at some point in the past four hundred years.

The base below asks if assistance is needed, and when Akaashi confirms it is, they remote in and take the helm, and Kuroo leans back, more than happy to let them at it. Kuroo was never a stellar pilot, and it'd be a shame to get this far and die in the fiery explosion of a botched landing.

"This is a UEA base. These are our people," Akaashi says to the crew, once they've touched ground. "The teams here are going to come on-board, and take the viable crew still in cryo for treatment. Everyone else will be split into teams, and taken to quarantine for examination and debrief. Once they decide we're clear, we'll go from there. Any questions?"

There are plenty. Is it really 2600? Where are they exactly, will they be able to contact Tokyo? When can they eat, when will they find out about the fate of the crew still frozen, and so on, but these are nothing that Akaashi can answer.

Kuroo would still like to know who sent that message, why, and how? From where? But he knows Akaashi won't have any of those answers, either, so he sits on it, heading back down to pods 343 and 342, waiting for Kenma to be carried off the ship and taken care of. 

It's not a long wait, and Kuroo watches anxiously as it happens, two UEA members wearing hazmat masks, carefully unhooking the heavy metal latches holding Kenma's pod to the wall, then setting it on a platform that hovers off the ground, and directing him out of sight. 

After that, he meets Yamaguchi.

Yamaguchi is a young, very excitable man with freckles all across his face. He's their tour guide of the future, waiting for Kuroo at the bottom of _Chiisana Kyojin's_ gangway, full of anxious, excited energy, bowing twice before they make it down, and babbling the entire walk to quarantine. 

"Nice to meet you all, I'm Yamaguchi Tadashi, if you have any questions you can ask me and I'll try to answer! I'm here to help you all with the assim-in process - "

"Help us what?" Goshiki asks.

"Oh – _assim-in_ ," Yamaguchi says, slower this time. "Assimilate in to a new setting, it's primarily a military term that came into use – two hundred years ago, it's started leaking into civilian vocabulary though, it's usually used when talking about alien cultures – "

"What planet are we on?" Tsukishima says, interrupting Yamaguchi's rapid fire, almost babbling speech. 

"Ha, sorry, this is cluster of planets is actually known as Ikkei UEA Medical Center," he says. "We're more than just hospitals but that's what we're known for. The actual name of the planet is A34533. This way!" Yamaguchi calls, so the ones in the back can hear, pointing ahead at a row of identical, large white buildings. "We're going to building C!" 

Yamaguchi leads them inside what is apparently building C, down the halls, into a standard lift, still talking about the history of the center, and the planet, and the universe.

" – And this whole system is the oldest UEA base outside of our home system, it was settled by the first FTL ship that launched from earth only two years after the _Chiisana Kyojin_ – "

"Wait, FTL?" Kuroo asks. "Faster than light?"

"Yes," Yamaguchi confirms. "It's what we have installed in all our ships for any significant travel - that's how we were able to populate a system so far out, when it took the _Chiisana Kyojin_ nearly four hundred years to just get here! Even some civilian ships have it FTL installed now – "

"You're saying," Tsukishima says, like it's the punchline to a bad joke. "A ship with faster than light travel launched from earth _two years_ after us?"

"Well - yes? It was your records that lead to the breakthroughs that made it happen," Yamaguchi says. "Honestly, the _Chiisana Kyojin's_ journey is still one of the most revolutionary in human's history in space, every kid studies it in school. It's kind of this – iconic tragedy, how the crew was doomed and wouldn't live to see it. But – you did! Here you are!" 

"It's only been four hundred years," Shirabu says. "The cryosystem had enough energy for eight hundred. Everyone gave up on us pretty fast."

"Oh – actually – _Chiisana Kyojin's_ 's cryosystem had a flaw that made breakdown after two hundred years inevitable," Yamaguchi says. Tsukishima visibly tenses beside Kuroo, glaring down at the smooth floor beneath them. "The station on earth only discovered the error after you launched. We know about the improvements Kei made before the slipstream attempt, but even considering that, I don't think anyone was expecting to see so many of you alive – "

" _Kei_?" Tsukishima asks, eyes narrowed. 

"Tsukishima Kei!" Yamaguchi says, eyes bright. "He's the cryosystem expert on the _Chiisana Kyojin_ , and directly before they – you, I mean, went into cryo, he identified the error in the system and came up with the fix right then and there. We call it the Kei lock now, he's likely the reason that any of you are still alive today!"

Tsukishima's face is steadily growing pink, mouth going slack. This is the fastest, most excited Yamaguchi has spoken yet.

"Stories like that are why _Chiisana Kyojin_ sticks in people's minds, I think," Yamaguchi says, seeming sheepish now as he rubs at the back of his neck. "I can say Kei is probably the reason I joined the UEA, anyway. His work revolutionized the way we approach cryonics."

"Right," Tsukishima finally croaks out.

"Well, uhm," Yamaguchi says, unsettled by the intense reaction. "I'll let you all settle in. This is where you'll be staying until you're cleared from quarantine. There is a cryo unit in this building, so I believe some of your crew is being treated here, if you'd like to take a visit, just let me know."

"What if we want to contact someone on earth?" Goshiki asks.

"Ah," Yamaguchi pauses in the doorway, awkwardly juggling this question. "We have teams working now to contact any – descendants who may be alive. We'll let you know if we find someone. We want to keep it family-only for now, until we – understand the situation entirely. We'll be able to assist you in locating other people later. Anything else?"

"Yeah," Kuroo says. "Can I have a PADD?"

~

Kuroo is given the tablet-like device, which connects to an internet-like network, where there are pictures of cats falling off counters. Of course.

Because Kuroo is partly a coward, the first thing he looks is any new music his favorite bands made in the time between his launch and their death. This gets the entire room excited, and looking up various celebrities and bands takes up a good few hours, and raises their spirits.

"You know, it's a lot of luck," Goshiki says, around a mouthful of futuristic, creamy dessert Yamaguchi delivered. "That we're still alive."

"I'm still curious about that message we got," Kuroo mutters, because that didn't seem like _luck_. It was the thing that got them on the UEA's radar again, and without it they'd still be in space, either dead or struggling to accept the fact that they would be before the end of the week.

This is what finally gets him to close the ancient tabloid-level news about Jpop bands and scifi movies. He types in _first faster than light ship._

The _UEA Intrepid_ is his result, and it launched from England. Kuroo frowns at this. Yaku's English is – was – stilted at best, so this seems unlikely. Still, he searches the crew.

 _Yaku Morisuke_.

Kuroo's heart skips a beat when he sees the name on the list of personnel. He clenches his jaw like he's bracing for bad news, like the next thing he'll see is an image of Yaku's dead body, and clicks on his name. 

Yaku Morisuke. Crewman of the Intrepid from 2202 to 2204. Born 2184, Death Unk.

_Esn Yaku was a RF Specialist (modern title Communications Officer) who participated in the UEA Intrepid's successful flight to the Ret System, and was one of the initial crewmen to touch down on planets A34538, A34545, and A34745, what is commonly known as the Ikkei UEA Medical Center._

_There are no significant demerits or reprimands on Esn Yaku's record._

Kuroo scrolls down and sees Yaku – fuck, Kuroo somehow forgot how cute Yaku is, because he really is, and the fact nearly makes Kuroo groan at how serious faced he looks, in a UEA jumpsuit, hair trimmed shorter than he's used to on the sides, but the top still a wavy, almost-curly mess. 

Yaku came after Kuroo. 

He not only _waited_ , he got his missing certifications, applied to the UEA, flew into space after Kuroo, then saved him from certain, miserable, starving, maddening death. 

Kuroo keeps digging from there, expecting this to just be the beginning, but apparently there's a reason why Yaku's death date is unknown on his official profile. Kuroo can get short, promotional footage filmed by the UEA of Yaku standing on the bridge of the _Intrepid_ , looking even shorter than usual next to a gigantic Russian crewmate, but nothing after that flight. 

The only proof of his existence is on the _Intrepid_ , and nothing else. No awards, no retirement, no death. 

The most obvious answer he can think of is that he was lost in service, possibly in an event that resulted in multiple deaths, and the record was poorly kept in the mayhem of settling a planet, but Kuroo doesn't consider this seriously. 

There's nothing he can do about it either way, but he doesn't know if he can stand to find out that Yaku was sucked out of an airlock or killed by his own malfunctioning suit, in a sloppy landing or take off. 

Even as Kuroo obsessively searches, he avoids certain avenues until they're the only options left. Kids, family, marriage. 

Logically he knows that would be the healthy thing, and to find out that Yaku devoted his entire life in Kuroo's memory and never moved on would be depressing, selfish to even want, but it's still a fresh thing to him. Kuroo's literally never loved anyone but Yaku, and to see this evidence of Yaku's concern has him feeling it stronger and more tender than ever.

But there's nothing. 

~

He's still searching the next day when he's granted a brief visit with Kenma's pod, down in the cryo unit. 

It's an intimidating space, reminding Kuroo of a hostile alien level in a video game, row after row of glowing blue bodies, broken up by individual rooms, where the pods are taken into to be worked on.

The frost has been cleared from Kenma's pod, and the Kenma laying inside looks, thankfully, like his normal self – small, vaguely sickly, but his expression more relaxed than Kuroo's used to seeing. 

"The two of you were friends?" The nurse asks, and when Kuroo says yes, she gets very excited, and nearly pushes him down into the chair beside the pod. "A familiar voice would really help give his brain a nudge."

So Kuroo tries to give his brain a nudge, and also, uses the excuse to vent.

"He said he wasn't going to wait, remember that?" Kuroo says. "I can't remember what you said, what was the odds I was going to see him again? I guess I didn't see him again. I heard from him again. What are the odds of that?"

It's always been one of Kuroo's biggest weaknesses, he likes to touch and be touched by the people he cares about. Roughhousing and hugs, nearly anything. After the events of the past week he'd do just about anything to at least be able to hold Kenma's hand, but the best he can do is press the back of his hand against the glass that separates them. 

He's told he's only allowed an hour with Kenma, and he tries to abide by this, but ends up getting lost in the cryo unit, which apparently goes on forever, row after row of frozen bodies.

"Kuroo!"

"Sorry," Kuroo apologizes to the flustered Yamaguchi, who rushes toward him in the hall. "I got a little turned around. How many people are down here??"

"Oh – a few thousand."

" _Thousands_?" Kuroo asks. "Why??” 

"Well, there's the usual reason for illnesses, but this is a military base," Yamaguchi reminds him, gently. "So we have a few people preserved for their unique skills, or political reasons, experiments – voluntarily, of course!" he says, at Kuroo's horrified expression. "Like I was saying earlier, Kei's lock totally revolutionized the cryo process, it takes less energy to hold a hundred crew in cryo than it is to feed them, so – we utilize it when we can."

"I see," Kuroo says, looking over the rows of people, the vast majority in UEA jumpsuits. 

"They're waiting for you upstairs," Yamaguchi reminds him, gently. 

"Right, yeah," Kuroo says, and allows himself to be pulled along. 

Today is Kuroo's debriefing, and this is actually a bit odd. 

Back when he first launched into space, the UEA certainly had military leanings, but nothing as official as what it's turned into. The process feels oddly like an interrogation even when discussing utterly mundane routines of the ship, and Kuroo is infinitely glad Yamaguchi told them the fallout of Tsukishima's last minute alterations on the cryosystem, and the current belief on how it came about. 

Outside of that, there's not much to report, and he's free to go. 

~

"Excuse me," Kuroo says, on his next trip down to visit Kenma. "I was wondering if i could ask about someone who might be in the cryo unit."

"Well, I'll see what I can find," the nurse behind the reception desk says. "What's their name?"

Kuroo gives Yaku's name, age, the ship he served on, and once he starts he finds himself going, and going – Yaku's height, weight, names of his parents, his allergies to coconut and lime, and how he insisted on wearing socks to bed, every night, then would overheat and pull them off in his sleep, until they'd collect whole piles of them at the bottom of their mattress.

The nurse seems charmed by this, encouraging Kuroo to go on, but does not have good news. 

"I'm not seeing him listed in any of our units," she says, sympathetically. "I looked in the neighboring planets network, too, but there's no one under that name. Sorry."

Kuroo nods like he accepts this, but he does not. It's too good. It fits too well. It _has to be_ the answer. 

_Yaku Morisuke cryo%_

_Yaku cryo%_

_Intrepid crew cryo%_

"There's going to be drinks served down in the cafeteria if you'd like to come," Yamaguchi calls from the door. 

"No, thanks," Kuroo says, still typing the various combinations into the search function in his PADD.

 _2201 cryo%_ , he searches. Nothing.

_2200 cryo% A34745_

_2200 cryo% A34545_

_2200 cryo% A34538_

There. An article: _Esn Haiba speaks about... served on the 2200 of the Intrepid… cryostasis…_

It's in Russian, and Kuroo waits impatiently for the language to convert from Russian to Japanese, then reads the rough translation greedily, both hands holding the PADD, leaning in.

_"It was an honor, and I served with many honorable men," Esn Haiba says of his time on the Intrepid. When asked about his decision to return from A34538, he was candid._

_"Part of our service included developing the planet. But the UEA was not prepared for the realities. Resources at the time were scarce, rations were low, and those of us who were not specialized in terraform were permitted to return home and finish our contract on earth station. Some crew even elected cryostasis, until the planet could provide."_

_Does Haiba miss any of the crew left behind?_

_"Yes, many. We became like family. One crew member I was close with, a mentor, who elected to cryostasis, I will miss his scoldings, I think, though I would not have said this before!"_

_Haiba looks forward to the distant day when A34538 is florishing, and all his crewmates from the Intrepid will wake once again._


	3. Chapter Three

There's a doctor stationed at the cryounit desk the next morning, but he does not seem moved when Kuroo presents him with the poorly translated Russian article, dated three hundred ninety-eight years ago, with no sources, or explicit references to Yaku's name.

"I can search our records again if you want," he says, as though this is a waste of time, typing in Yaku's name. "But the records from back then weren't the greatest. Our search engines usually don't pull much for anything before 2300."

"There's no way to manually check?"

"Like. Walking down the halls?" the doctor asks. "Looking at each pod? There's five floors of cryounits, but no one's stopping you if you want to try."

Kuroo steps away from the desk, annoyed, because now that the idea has been suggested, there is no way he'll be able to rest without doing exactly that, in every hospital with a cryounit, on all three planets. 

The thought of Yaku tucked away, lost and forgotten like a misplaced sock, is unacceptable. That's not how Yaku's story is going to end, and if that's the only way to make sure of it, what choice does Kuroo have?

The suggestion was clearly a sarcastic one, but once the doctor realizes this is something Kuroo is seriously going to attempt, he becomes a little more helpful.

"I guess you're in the right place if you're looking for someone from that long ago. This hospital is the oldest one on the planet," he says. "Wait. Let me get you an employee grid, too. We use it for maintenance." 

Kuroo takes the maintenance chart, and begins one of the most depressing exercises of his life. 

Not just because of the futility of it, but wondering just how many of these men and women have been forgotten and lost like he suspects Yaku has. He works in rows, back and forth, hour after hour, and hasn't even finished one floor in the course of a week. 

It's not a realistic search, and Kuroo realizes, quickly, that eventually quarantine will be lifted, and Kuroo will be expected to leave the hospital, get on a ship, fly out into space again. With how regimented the UEA has become, he doesn't know if he'll even be allowed to refuse these orders. He'd probably be allowed to quit the institution completely, but then, he probably wouldn't have unlimited access to skulk around the bowels of their hospitals, either. 

"You have any ETA on when we're heading back home?" Kuroo asks one night at dinner, keeping his voice casual.

"Not much longer, actually," Akaashi says. 

"Oh?"

"It's next on the agenda," Akaashi says. "They're going to make our appearance public in the next week, and they're trying to organize our arrival after that."

"Like a parade or what?" Kuroo asks. It doesn't seem like a terribly complicated thing for them to plan.

"They've been trying to figure out how to install FTL tech on the _Chiisana Kyojin_ , so we can be fly it back to earth," Akkaashi says.

Kuroo recoils from the idea – the memory of _Chiisana Kyojin's_ hall and helm makes his insides clench like remembering a monster from an unsettling dream. 

"I'm told it will be – symbolic."

"They can have all the symbolism they want, but there's no way I'm piloting that thing again," Kuroo says.

"You might not have a choice," Akaashi says, staring down at his mixed peas and corn with a grim expression as he stirs them, slowly. "The current pilot they're trying to coach is struggling with our – primitive technology. Having to manually calculate each burst has apparently grown obsolete. If they decide that we need to fly that thing home, you might be the only one who can do it."

"I'm not even a pilot," Kuroo says.

"I know."

"Half the crew took the same training I did."

"They have the knowledge, but would you really put one of them at the helm?" Akaashi asks.

Kuroo groans, not wanting to admit it, but. "No. Whatever. I'll train this new guy."

Kuroo goes back to eating but Akaashi watches, concerned. Eventually Kuroo sighs, and rubs a hand down his face.

"You remember Yaku?" he says, answering Akaashi's unasked question.

"Yaku," Akaashi says, trying out the name. "No. Is he one of our pilots?"

"No, this was all the way back on earth. The RF team."

Akaashi does not remember, and there's no recognition on his face when Kuroo shows him the picture from his profile. Not a big surprise, they hadn't exactly rubbed shoulders back at the station. 

"He's the one who sent us the message to stop," Kuroo says.

"Oh," Akaashi says, raising an eyebrow, giving the image another look. "Well. We owe him a lot, then."

Kuroo laughs a little in his throat, because it's frustrating how true that is. 

He explains the situation so far, not caring if it makes him sound just a little delusional, like a lovesick fool, because it's what he is. Akaashi listens with the expression that got him the position he has now at this tender age: calm, steady, and inscrutable. 

"I'm trying to find him," Kuroo says. "But it's taking – a while. I don't think I'll be finished searching for months. I want that time," his voice gets more aggressive than he intended, the depth of his frustration finally showing through. "I can't leave without knowing."

Akaashi wipes his mouth, then sets aside his napkin, movements slow and deliberate. "Well," he says. "Considering most of us are just sitting around watching cat videos, I'd say this is a more productive use of our time."

~

There are around one hundred-twenty crew of the _Chiisana Kyojin_ , and some of them are excited to have a project to keep them busy, others obviously dragging their feet, but they start crawling through the cryounit in neat, regimented pace.

Kuroo is grateful at first, but realizes the problem with this at the first check in.

"No sightings yet," Goshiki says. "And we've finished the first and second floors."

 _Did you,_ Kuroo wants to ask. _Did you really?_

And Kuroo believes that they looked, but he can't entirely trust that they looked _close enough_. 

"We'll keep the search going," Akaashi says, later that day. "But I just got the official orders. They're going to be installing the upgrades to the _Chiisana Kyojin_ , we need you to start giving flying lessons. Unless you want to be the one steering us back home."

Kuroo agrees to go, because it doesn't matter. If they don't find Yaku, he's just going to end up double checking himself regardless.

~

"Lieutenant Bokuto!"

"Kuroo. Biological Engineer," Kuroo says. Bokuto's eyes are wide and wild and eerily round. He nods after hearing Kuroo's name like he's committing it to memory.

The first few hours of working together, Kuroo can't tell if the man trusts him – he seems like he's on edge, thinking that Kuroo doesn't know what he's talking about, maybe, but Kuroo realizes that Bokuto just stares at every one and thing with that same level of scrutinizing intensity. 

A week later he realizes, no, that's wrong, too. Bokuto just has very round eyes.

"This system is the worst!!" Bokuto moans, slamming his fist in the helm. "It's all the worst parts of flying! There's none of the good parts!"

"I'll take your word on that," Kuroo says, kicking his feet up onto the helm of their practice ship while they break for lunch.

This should be frustrating, this childlike tantrum, but messing around with Bokuto is actually kind of fun. Something about his wild, careless demeanor actually distracts Kuroo a few hours each day, and he finds himself looking forward to their utterly fruitless lessons.

The engineers have put together a mock up for them to use, a shuttle with the same helm design as the _Chiisana Kyojin_ , with the hyper advanced engineering of the FTL Frankensteined onto that. It's a nightmare that Kuroo's not sure he could learn how to manage, even if he wanted to. 

"What are the odds they'll change their minds and just let us tow the _Chiisana Kyojin_ home?"

"It's a direct order from _Oikawa_ ," Bokuto says. "He gets fixated about these dumb projects. We're in it for the long haul, Kuroo."

Kuroo makes a noise of disappointment, though he's secretly pleased. God bless Admiral Oikawa's bizarre flights of fancy –the longer it takes for them to figure this out, the longer he'll have to try to find Yaku. They still haven't really made any progress on getting the ship at FTL speed by the end of the week, and that buys Kuroo the entire weekend.

"Kuroo! There you are," Akaashi says, when Kuroo makes it back to the hospital that day. He's smiling, and the sight makes Kuroo stop dead in his tracks. "Great news."

"Yeah?" Kuroo asks, heart already picking up speed. 

"Kenma woke up."

~

"Was someone hurt?"

"No," Kuroo says.

Kenma huffs, looking over the hospital room, leaning closer to Kuroo than he usually would. He looks a mess, refusing to do anything with his hair or wash his face – a grumbly, confused little creature on the hospital bed beside him, unsettled by his surroundings and struggling to process any new information. 

This is the third time they've repeated this exact conversation.

"I'm in a hospital," Kenma says, looping back to the beginning again. 

"Yes," Kuroo says. "You just woke up from cryostasis."

"Was someone hurt?"

"No," Kuroo says.

"Did someone die?" Kenma asks – this is actually a curve-ball. 

"There's nothing you have to worry about," Kuroo settles on, after a beat of hesitation.

This, of course, is what Kenma finally latches onto. He looks up at Kuroo's face, refusing to be tricked. "Who died?"

Kuroo first tries to think of people who Kenma knew and got along with on the ship, but when he opens his mouth to say their names, thinks maybe it'd be better to start with some of the people Kenma barely knew at all, at least when he's in this state. 

"Obara," he says. "A few other people. There was an accident on the ship."

"What ship?" Kenma asks, eyes narrowed.

Ah. "What's the last thing you remember?"

Kenma's eyes drift forward in deep thought. Apparently he distracts himself, because he looks around the room a beat later, seeming startled.

"I'm in a hospital?" 

This continues just long enough for Kuroo to get seriously worried, but after Kenma goes to sleep he's told by a doctor that Kenma will probably be fully recovered by the time he wakes up, and this is thankfully the case.

He's grouchy and impatient when Kuroo shows up a few hours later, face red from scrubbing and hair up in a knot. 

"So," Kuroo asks. "What were the odds of this happening?"

"One in infinity," Kenma says, not in the mood to play, but honestly he thinks Kenma’s answer might not change much when he hears all the details of how this came to be.

~

Akaashi has given Kuroo a lot of warning about Admiral Oikawa. About how he is friendly enough, but is a relentless perfectionist, and has very, very high expectations of his crew, which they now qualify as. 

Akaashi has tried to advise Admiral Oikawa of just how difficult this upgrade to the _Chiisana Kyojin_ he's requesting is, but Admiral Oikawa is sure it can work, and that is that, apparently. Admiral Oikawa is apparently flamboyant as well, excited by the idea of putting on as big of a show as possible, and he expects _Chiisana Kyojin_ to be center stage. 

"He's expecting this to happen," Akaashi warns. "He's invested a lot in it."

Oikawa can expect whatever he likes, but it doesn't change the rules of reality. Those are Kuroo's unapologetic thoughts on this, and what he's thinking when Oikawa approaches him for an update. 

"How are the lessons going?" Oikawa asks, chipper and obviously expecting to hear good news. 

"Not great," Kuroo says.

Oikawa blinks in surprise, and Kuroo knows part of it is being addressed so casually. Most of the officers here aren't enforcing the rules with the _Chiisana Kyojin_ crew as strictly as they do with the enlisted teams, treating them like a strange mix of civilian and crew, which is exactly what they are. Oikawa doesn't appear offended by Kuroo's offhand tone, more like disoriented. 

"Not great how?" Oikawa asks.

"Not great like, you're asking us to do something impossible," Kuroo says. "It's like strapping a rocket to the back of a horse drawn carriage and expecting us to still be able to steer with reins."

"No," Oikawa says. "It's not impossible, because the _Intrepid_ used the same steering method as the _Chiisana Kyojin_."

"Then show me the schematics," Kuroo says, knowing full well such schematics could not possibly exist. 

Oikawa grins, though.

"I can do even better than that," Oikawa says.

~

It's originally just Oikawa and Kuroo, but Bokuto ends up tagging along for obvious reasons, and Kenma is desperate for a reason to escape his spectacularly bizarre roommate, a tall man named Tendo, so he sits along as well. 

The four of them climb into a cart, and Oikawa drives south, to an especially green area. It’s a good distance away from the rest of the buildings, the paved ground beneath them so clean Kuroo can’t tell if it’s just well-maintained or not well-traveled, or both. A tall figure dots the horizon, what looks like a statute, but as they get closer, Kuroo realizes is too life-sized and detailed to be an effigy. Bolted and welded to the ground, the ship Kuroo's seen photos of over and over again in his research.

The _Intrepid_ herself. 

A historian with a specialty in FTL space travel is waiting patiently for their arrival. His name is General Kai, and he has a face that looks far too young for such a rank. 

"Hello," he says, smiling pleasantly as they climb out of the cart. "You're – Kuroo Tetsurou?" 

"Yep," Kuroo says, and it is a very, very eerie thing to be greeted by a man who absolutely knows who he is on sight, and to know he almost certainly learned it from a text book somewhere. Kai is familiar with Kenma as well, then struggles with Bokuto, who lets him twist in the wind, either out of amusement or obliviousness.

"I’m sorry,” Kai is eventually forced to say. “I'm not sure if I know your name."

"Lieutenant Bokuto," he says, shaking Kai's hand. 

"Bokuto didn't serve with us," Kuroo says. "He's from your time."

"Ah," Kai says, relieved. “Well, I’m glad you could join us anyway, Lieutenant.”

Kai leads them up the gangway of the _Intrepid_ , manually unlocking the bay doors at the top while Oikawa eyes the metal work of the outside, running his hand along the clean welding of the panels.

"She almost looks in working order," he says.

"It's a memorial now," Kai says. "A lot of the internals were taken out. I don't think she could get very far, but the important stuff is still here."

"We want to see the schematics," Oikawa says. "The engine, the helm. Everything."

"I'll show you everything we've got," Kai says. 

The _Intrepid's_ lights flicker and turn on automatically when they enter, Kuroo, Bokuto, and Oikawa all having to duck to clear the doorway. It's a cramped ship, dozens of walkways leading off in various, dark, disorienting directions, and Kai leads them down a maze-like route to the bridge. 

Unfortunately this visit raises more questions than answers. 

"See? This system is identical to _Chiisana Kyojin's_ ," Oikawa says, and he's right. It is. Quite literally identical. This doesn't prove his point, though, as they look through the blue prints on the screen - the FTL work installed, but it's almost as if it's a separate system completely.

"It's like they weren't integrated at all," Kuroo says. He looks to Kai. "You said this was gutted?"

"Yep," Kai says. "Back in 2400, but unfortunately they didn't keep a record of what parts."

"I'm wondering if this was just stuffed with some standard helm from the time," Kuroo says. "Because as far as I can tell, this thing is designed for standard engine."

Oikawa frowns up at it, wanting to argue, but Kuroo is clearly right. 

"Hey," Bokuto says. "Can we see the engine itself??" 

"Certainly," Kai says, and starts directing Bokuto out another door, and Oikawa follows. Kuroo's going to join them, when he sees Kenma at a corner of the bridge, at one of the workstations facing the wall. 

"Are you actually logging in to that?" Kuroo asks.

"This was Yaku's workstation," Kenma says. "The logs are still here."

Kenma points to the screen, at the timecard he's found. 

_25.02.2201 yakum – in 0500 out 1300_  
_26.02.2201 yakum – in 0500 out 1300_  
_03.03.2201 yakum – in 0459 out 1300_

Possibly the most boring, mundane piece of evidence of Yaku's existence up to this point, but for some reason it shakes Kuroo's core. Yaku sat in this chair, day in, day out. This was Yaku's station. He typed on this keyboard, rested his elbow on this counter, chin in hand when his neighbor ranted on about something boring – he existed, here.

"There are forty-six outgoing transmissions to the _Chiisana Kyojin_ ," Kenma says, glancing up to meet Kuroo's startled expression. "They're the last he did before logging off the final time."

"We only received two," Kuroo says.

Kenma opens the log, and scrolls down to the beginning, to the first thing Yaku sent. 

"That's not a message," Kuroo says. It's a packet. A bundle of code Yaku transmitted over. Its file name is _WAKE UP_.

"This is a virus," Kenma murmurs. 

Not quite a virus, but a code certainly intended to alter one of the programs on the _Chiisana Kyojin_ , strong arming it in a crude, hacker-level of expertise, but then again this was hardly Yaku's specialty. 

"He adjusted the wake up trigger," Kenma says.

"Yeah, I keep seeing the original exit location of the slipstream," Kuroo says. That location, the place they were supposed to exit the slipstream, was the programmed wake up call. Obviously, they never reached that set of coordinates, and so the cryosystem never shut down, and they would've never woken up.

Yaku calculated the direction they were headed, and set a new finish line ahead of them – one that just took them several hundred years to finally drift across.

"It looks like Wake Up was installed successfully," Kuroo says. "What are the rest of the messages?"

It's a bundle called STOP. Yaku attempted to send it forty-three times. 

STOP…. _Failed to connect_  
STOP…. _Failed to connect_  
STOP…. _Failed to connect_  
STOP…. _Failed to connect_  
WAKE UP2…. _Error: Program in use_  
STOP…. _Failed to connect_  
STOP…. _Failed to connect_

As expected, when they open the packet and skim through the code, they see an attempt to get the _Chiisana Kyojin_ to full stop. 

But Yaku was never a programmer or pilot, the code itself was never going to work with the cryosystem active and locking up the helm anyway. Yaku seemed to realize this eventually, and attempted to send an altered WAKE UP call, with additional self-replicating code to then trigger a full stop at the helm, but _Chiisana Kyojin_ wasn't having it, and wanted a system restart before installing anymore alterations. 

"Why did he want us to stop?" Kenma mumbles to himself, already looking for the answer himself, pulling through Yaku's files. 

"Were we headed toward a star? A blackhole?" Kuroo asks, as Kenma looks over a projected trajectory saved in Yaku's files – the one he must have calculated himself.

"No," Kenma says. "Not that Yaku saw, at least."

Kuroo looks at the map Yaku generated, sees the lines of the transmissions he was sending, from where, dotted with tiny, intricate formulas, scratched off little corrections and edits. 

Here, is Yaku's strength. 

After giving up on a manual STOP program, Yaku's last resort were the messages. The ones they received, just after waking up. 

He loaded his simple _"Stop"_ and _"Stop, you pain in the ass"_ with so much mindless white noise that it delayed them exactly four hundred years. He calculated the exact moment the _Chiisana Kyojin_ would enter this system, and had two transmissions waiting to meet them, at just the right moment. 

It's honestly a work of art, and Kuroo feels shamelessly proud, and Kenma lets him brag about his brilliant boyfriend for a moment or two, but does a poor job of playing along, more distracted by _why._

"He could've set the coordinates to wake up right where we were at the time. We could've woken up _right there_ ," Kenma says. "Why did he schedule it hundreds of years in the future… ?"

"I don't think he thought as many of us would wake up as we did," Kuroo says. "He clearly didn't think we were going to stop on our own, and he knew the cryosystem malfunctioned. So he had the ship wait until it gets to a location where we can get help."

Kenma shakes his head. "They had FTL travel," he says. "The UEA could've sent help to us, wherever we were. Why wait that long?"

 _Because he wanted to see me again,_ is Kuroo's impulsively romantic answer, but this doesn't actually make sense either. Presumably, Yaku wasn't forced to enter the cryonic system. He could've decided to go home to earth instead, and met Kuroo there. Hundreds of years ago.

It's a convoluted solution, but one that Yaku was clearly desperate about, trying it again, and again, and again, before his last ditch efforts of sending a simple request to a ship he apparently feared was essentially dead. 

Inexplicable as the whole thing is, he's still proud. As Oikawa, Bokuto and Kai finally meander over to see what's taking up their attention and they start trying to figure out the sequence of events, Kuroo wishes, on a very petty level, that Yaku was there at his side, so he could show him off properly. 

~

"We finished searching the last hospital," Akaashi says, one terrible day. "I also consulted with a historian, the one you worked with. General Kai. He advised me – the majority of the crew from the _Intrepid_ who elected for cryostasis have already woken up, or their pods malfunctioned. He doesn't think there's much chance of finding any of them in the hospitals here."

Kuroo feels his insides ice over. "Right," he breathes out. 

"I've been putting Admiral Oikawa off from planning a launch by saying that my crew was still being treated," Akaashi continues. "But the last of them woke up earlier this week. I can't put it off anymore."

"Understood," Kuroo says. 

Akaashi flinches a little, even though Kuroo's tone was only pleasant.

Kuroo wanders up the stairs of the hospital, slowly. 

For the first time he lets himself entertain the question: Could he leave this planet without finding Yaku? Everything in him recoils at the idea. He knows he will likely be forced to, at some point, but can't reconcile the realities in his head. 

He visits Kenma's room, and sits down beside his bed. He asks Kenma his opinion, and Kenma puts down his PADD to stare off to the side for a good two minutes, which is actually a long amount of time to sit in silence and wait, but Kuroo does, arms crossed, leaned back.

"I don't know the numbers," he finally says. "But the odds of you finding Yaku by looking – aren't realistic."

"What about the odds of him being in a cryo unit somewhere in this system?"

This, Kenma looks down at his knees, uncomfortable. "Likely," he says. "More likely than not."

"Great," Kuroo laughs. 

"I'm sorry," Kenma says, but Kuroo waves this off.

He leaves the hospital with an empty, hollow smile on his face. He feels like that, empty and hollow, but knows this is an illusion. He's numb at the moment, but soon anger or pain will make itself known.

"Kuroo."

Kuroo looks over at the familiar voice. Kai, walking up the steps. 

"General," Kuroo says, nodding back. 

"Something wrong?" Kai asks, apparently seeing right through Kuroo's smile. 

Kuroo shrugs, hopelessly. "Just the missing Intrepid crewmen Akaashi asked you about."

"Right," Kai says, with a wince. "Yeah. I'm sorry about that, but unless you're looking for Yaku Morisuke, there's not much I can do." 

Interestingly, he says this like it's a joke, a ridiculous suggestion. As if expecting Kuroo to respond with a self-deprecating chuckle, _if only I was **just** looking for Yaku Morisuke!_

When Kuroo stares, flummoxed, Kai's expression grows more serious.

"Are you – actually talking about Yaku Morisuke?"

"How do you know Yaku??" Kuroo asks.

"I mean – I don't," Kai says. "You were on the tour of the _Intrepid_?"

"Yeah?" Kuroo asks. "Not a tour, I was just on the bridge? The helm?"

Kai puts both his hands up in the sort of calming motion one would do toward a wild animal, and Kuroo realizes he's actually shaking in place, entire body tense. 

"One second," Kai says. "I need to get my keys."

Kai hurries inside the building, then out again, holding a jingling keyring. He jogs toward a cart, and Kuroo follows. 

"There were no hospitals," Kai says, as the short ride is made even shorter with his reckless speed. "When the _Intrepid_ landed."

"Yeah," Kuroo says. "It was an uncharted alien planet."

"What I mean is," Kai says, "They didn't have any hospital to go to when they wanted to put their crew into cryo. They had to use the ship."

Kuroo stares.

"Most of them were eventually moved to the hospital," Kai says. "And some of them woke up. But they kept a few in the ship."

They stop at the _Intrepid_ , and Kuroo is actually a little scared as he gets out, as they hurry up to gangway, down the winding, narrow halls of the ship, past the bridge, and down to the bowels. 

His steps down to the cryo unit feel heavy, and echo loudly. He can see the glowing blue as he reaches the floor, the sight makes him hesitate. 

It's just around the corner. Yaku should be just around this corner, and Kuroo knows if he turns, and Yaku is not there, if he sees a stranger, or an empty pod, the disappointment might actually manifest into something physical, and painful, and something he will not recover from.

But he does.

A body is there, he panicked mind processes first.

Expression soft and untroubled in sleep, bathed in blue light, in the UEA jumpsuit, hair short on the sides.

Yaku.

Kuroo is standing there, stunned, until Kai appears behind him.

"I noticed the mistranslation," Kai says. He points, and beneath the kanji of Yaku's name, someone at some point attempted to romanize them, and failed: _Yasuhisa Suzuki._ "I'm sure they tried their best, but the majority of the settlers on this planet were english speakers... So, I had them order a plaque with his actual name. I tried to find the official decision to put him in cryo and couldn't under either name. Then I looked for any descendants on earth who could vouch for his wishes, but couldn't find any of them, either."

"Only child," Kuroo murmurs, drifting toward him. "He's an only child."

"And no kids of his own, yeah," Kai says. "The UEA is listed as his default guardian, and admins here were fine with leaving him like this without any compelling reason to unfreeze him. I assume you can provide some?"

Kuroo nods, barely hearing the question. 

Yaku is a little monster while asleep, he shifts around, grabbing for blankets, then promptly kicking them off, before eventually curling slightly on his side and settling. Seeing him asleep like this, a straight, calm line, arms at his side, is so unnatural, some very young part of himself keeps bringing to mind _curses_. 

He presses his palm against the glass of Yaku's pod, probably harder than he should, like he can just reach in and grab him, feeling a physical _need_ to get him out. 

~

"I understand," the doctor says. "You really want him out of cryostasis, but he didn't actually discuss with you his plans for being frozen?"

"No," Kuroo says, annoyed, eyes flicking down to the nametag of this asshole – _Daishou_. "I wasn't here."

"Sorry guy," Daishou says. "But the fact that you knew him really isn't enough to clear this request. We need something more compelling than that."

"You just want to keep him – like this? Forever??"

"Until we get a compelling reason," Daishou says. "It's protocol."

The urge to reach out, grip the front of Daishou's coat, and shake, is so strong it almost happens until Kai's hand grabs Kuroo's shoulder, a firm, warning hold.

"What would count as a compelling reason?" Kai asks.

"A request from family," Daishou says. "A need for his special skills. Any personal record about his own wants. Something actually – you know – _compelling_."

"I understand Ensign Yaku doesn't have any living relatives," Kai says, an almost gentle tone. "Considering that we didn't keep a proper record of his name, we could've easily lost any proof of his own wants, and we don't have any of his special skills indexed. Doesn't this leave him in a permanent limbo?"

"I didn't come up with the protocol – "

"Surely some unique circumstances extend beyond standard procedure?" Kai asks. "If you don't feel comfortable deviating from protocol, I'm sure you have someone you could pass this request along to."

Daishou rolls his eyes, as though his life is incredibly difficult. "Fine. Write out a request. I'm not making any promises about how quickly we'll get around to reviewing – "

"Oikawa!" Kuroo shouts, seeing the man pass by the open door.

Oikawa, who was in the middle of straightening his cuff, jumps, startled as Kuroo steps around the processing desk, jogging over. 

"What?" he asks.

"He's not a pilot," Kuroo says. "But we found a member of the crew of the _Intrepid_ in a cryo unit. He was regularly on the bridge, and had plenty of chances to observe the helm."

Oikawa perks at this, expression almost childlike. "Has he been looked over? Would he be ready to consult with Bokuto before tomorrow?"

"He's still frozen," Kuroo says. "We need a compelling reason – "

"Shou-kun!"

Daishou jumps to his feet, back stiff. "Yes, Admiral!"

"Get this _Intrepid_ crewman processed, I want him awake and cleared for duty by tomorrow," Oikawa says. Daishou shouts out a quick affirmative, giving Kuroo a dark, unamused glare as he sits back down. Kuroo grins back, but honestly doesn't care either way, as long as he actually does the thing – and he does. 

Before the end of the hour, a group of medics are walking out of the _Intrepid_ , Yaku's clunky pod floating alongside them.

Thankfully, it's not Daishou who ends up taking on the case, but a smiling, pleasant doctor named Sugawara. 

"Some people like to open the pods as soon as they can," Sugawara says, as Yaku's pod is hoisted into the room, and nurses start reconnecting it to the power supply. "But when you're dealing with someone that's been in cryonic stasis for over two hundred years – or even seventy, honestly – I think it's a better idea to open the pod as a very last step. It's less of a shock. And if something does go wrong, you can always put them back under."

"Right, yeah," Kuroo agrees, not really listening. He's watching Sugawara's hands on the pod's settings, typing away.

"Hey! We're in luck – he just reached the peak of the rewarming stage." Sugawara smiles over his shoulder at Kuroo, who's expression must be near-rabid at this point. "That should shave a few hours off."

Kuroo lingers near the door, arms crossed. Every step of this has been a fight, and he's waiting for the other shoe to drop. Some medical emergency, the same type of complication that kept Kenma sealed away for so long. Part of him is still so certain of this that he actually jerks in surprise, and feels unprepared, when Sugawara officially shuts the pod down, and the front opens with that familiar soft hiss.

"He's in natural sleep now," Sugawara says, softly, stepping away so Kuroo can take his place. "He should wake up on his own soon, but you can try to wake him up, if you want."

The difference between natural and drugged sleep is apparent immediately – this is the Yaku from Kuroo's bed. Alive, warm, real, and when Yaku gives a short sigh, turning his head to the side, Kuroo is startled to feel his eyes start to sting. 

"Shit," he says, voice breaking. "Hey. Yakkun?"

Yaku keeps sleeping, but he reacts to Kuroo's voice, frowning slightly. 

Vividly remembering his own final dreams from cryostasis, Kuroo reaches out a hand – and it actually shakes a bit, somehow afraid – maybe that Yaku will vanish, or his hand will phase through entirely, proving this is an illusion, but no. 

Kuroo touches the side of Yaku's face, the warm, soft skin he knows, then cards his fingers through his hair.

"Yaku?" he asks. "Morisuke?"

Yaku's eyes open into dark slits. He blinks, twice, tilting his head toward Kuroo's touch, then sharply away as he sighs, and arches his back, stretching. 

"Oh. Hey," Yaku laughs once he spots Kuroo there, standing beside the pod, voice thick with sleep. "I was just thinking about you."

He grunts in surprise when Kuroo yanks him up in a bruising hug, arms limp and flopping for a moment before, seeming amused, he starts hugging back. 

"Good morning, I guess," he laughs, patting Kuroo's back.

Kuroo groans out a swear, deep in his throat, trying to hold back the actual tears. This body in his arms, Kuroo knows the weight, smell, the feel of him, the sound of his voice, the sound of his laugh, and he's here, _shit._

Still muggy headed from the cryo unit, Yaku is uncharacteristically agreeable about being manhandled out of the pod, to the hospital bed beside that. He goes along with Sugawara's requests during his check up with the same mildly confused, mildly amused cooperation. He's leaning heavily against Kuroo's side, allowing Kuroo's petting, his hand on Yaku's neck, then down his shoulder, then up again to his hair – he's been starving for this kind of physical comfort, and apparently Yaku senses this, wrapping one arm across Kuroo's middle loosely, toying with the edge of Kuroo's shirt.

"Where are we?" he asks Kuroo once Sugawara turns around, quietly, like it's embarrassing that he doesn't know the answer.

"A hospital," Kuroo says.

"Right," Yaku says, annoyed at the obvious dodge. "But where?"

"Do you remember when we finished working on _Chiisana Kyojin_?" Kuroo asks, trying to get a ballpark of Yaku's memory.

"… You left," Yaku says, blinking as the memory strikes. He sits up then, turning to stare at Kuroo in a vaguely accusatory way. "And then – then I – "

"You flew on the _Intrepid_?"

"You were – the _Chiisana Kyojin_ – " he pushes himself off the bed, putting some distance between himself and Kuroo as he backs away. "What happened?" he demands, voice sharp. "What's going on? The _Chiisana Kyojin_ was – doomed."

"We were," Kuroo says. "Until someone sent us a transmission." He watches Yaku process this, gaze going inward. "It told us to stop, so we stopped. We were able to land and get help."

"I – sent a code," Yaku says, as he remembers, a few steps behind. "To – to wake you up."

"Yeah," Kuroo says.

"It worked?"

"It worked," Kuroo says. "You woke me up. We're on the first planet you helped settle."

Yaku stares at him, up and down, then takes a second step back.

"Yaku?"

"You – " Yaku breathes out once. "I didn't think – what – how long? What year is it?"

"2601," Kuroo says.

"Twen-twenty," Yaku tries to repeat, wheezing, like he took a blow to the chest. Then he's leaning over, and dry heaving into the trash can.

~

"It's fine, it happens," Sugawara reassures them, giving Yaku a cup of water. "I know the first thing anyone thinks when they see that is cryotoxicity, but even perfectly normal stays in the cryo unit can make someone nauseated."

Sugawara ends the check up with strict orders to eat, and approval for duty the next day. 

On the way back from the cafeteria, Akaashi provides them with the bed number Yaku's been assigned, which is not in one of the shared open floors that Kuroo's been sleeping, but a private suite, reserved for high ranking officers, on the top floors. 

It is still a hospital room, but the nicest Kuroo's ever seen, reminding him of a hotel, dressers for clothing and a small kitchenette area, and of course, a bed. Massive and sturdy, and the focal point of the room.

Kuroo is grateful for this, though the implication is a bit much, especially from an acting captain. 

"What?" Yaku asks, catching the blush in the tips of Kuroo's ears. 

"Just," Kuroo says. "Akaashi of all people – gave us a private room."

Yaku narrows his eyes as the door closes behind him. 

"We don't – have to do anything," Kuroo says.

"Obviously," Yaku says, annoyed. "What have you been telling people? That we're together?"

"… Yeah?" Kuroo says, though he's actually not sure if he said that, exactly. It's possible, though, because it's the implication Kuroo's been operating under since he discovered Yaku Morisuke– unmarried, no kids, death date unknown. 

"I told you I wasn't going to wait for you, Kuroo!" 

"But," Kuroo says, struggling to voice the obvious. "Did you _not?_ "

" _No._ "

"Then why – why else would you go into space??"

"The UEA asked me!" Yaku says. "They liked my work on the _Chiisana Kyojin_. I turned them down at first but then – I decided to go, obviously, but it's not like I was _chasing_ you." 

"You froze yourself. Why – "

"Because our options were to starve here, fly back in a terrible flight, or freeze," Yaku says. "I picked cryo."

"You really expect me to believe that you froze yourself for four hundred years just to avoid some travel sickness."

Yaku stares up at him with a sort of furious, desperate anger and Kuroo knows he's right. As much good as that does him – this Yaku, he knows, too. This is the one who was inherently suspicious of all of Kuroo's motives, of letting anyone close. Courting Yaku had been a lot of effort, a lot of slow, careful work, and it looks like time away has at least partially reset back to square one.

"You could've woken us up then and there, instead you waited, and you froze yourself," Kuroo says, like it proves his point, though honestly he still has no idea why Yaku did this.

"That wasn't _for you_!"

"Then why??"

Yaku glares here, like he doesn't want to say it. "No one wanted to go after you. They considered you all dead. They classified the cryo malfunction as – fatal," Yaku swallows. This is an unpleasant memory for him. Kuroo feels a little guilty for dragging this out, and all he can think of are the forty-three, increasingly desperate attempts Yaku sent them to stop. "I thought… if you kept going at the same speed, they might know how to fix it by the time you made it out here, as long as they could see you when you did. I didn't think – " he takes a shaky inhale. "I didn't think I'd still _be here_ to see it. I wasn't – trying. I wasn't _planning_ to see you again."

But he hoped. Kuroo can see it clear on his face. It's the reason why picked cryo over returning to earth. A hope, a _just maybe_.

"But why go into space at all? Even if they asked, I didn't think you had any interest in that."

"They _asked_ ," Yaku repeats, trying to keep up the lie, then suddenly lets drop, hands flopping to his sides, as if realizing there's no point in it. Kuroo knows him too well. "It's not like I was holding a candle for you," he says, shifting, eyes darting away in embarrassment. "I – I tried. I tried with other – people. Back on earth. Nothing clicked. I knew you were gone, but it was like. As long as you were still alive, I was still – preoccupied with you. I guess. Stop smiling, you shit."

"What? It's a nice thing to hear," Kuroo says.

"But I wasn't going to be able to live a normal life on Earth after you," Yaku says, sourly. Kuroo watches as Yaku crosses ahead of him, walking to the bed and sitting down heavily. It reminds Kuroo of just how short Yaku is, not even making it to his chin, how nicely he fits in Kuroo's arms, and the urge to pull him in for a kiss comes so strong he has to clench his hands into fists. If he attempted that just now, Yaku would certainly bite off his tongue. 

"Unless I'm missing something," Kuroo says, keeping his voice as neutral as possible. "It kind of sounds like you did wait for me. Even if you didn't mean to." 

Yaku's arms cross, and he looks off to the side, furious with himself, grumbling out something that might be an agreement. 

"I waited for you," Kuroo reminds him, wanting to ease the sting of admitting it. "I'd wait for you. And I really – really missed you. If I have to wait longer, I will."

"Just," Yaku says. "It pisses me off." The rest is mumbled too low and angry for Kuroo to understand.

"What?" Kuroo asks. 

"It _pisses me off_ ," he repeats, louder. "That you just took it for granted."

Kuroo processes that slowly, and by the time he's finished, he's got a grin on his face that makes Yaku more furious than he's seen yet. 

"If Yakkun wants me to woo him – "

" _Shut up._ " 

"Does he want flowers? A poem??"

"Shut the fuck up, you egghead shit – " Yaku winds back the pillow on his lap and smacks at Kuroo with it, but he blocks it with his arm, laughing as Yaku keeps advancing, and he falls back onto the bed.

"No, you're right, Yaku deserves a long, proper – ow – courtship – "

Yaku has the pillow over his face, pressing down with both hands, until Kuroo gets his arms around Yaku's waist, rolling them both over. 

Ah. Yaku's barks are bad, and his bites are bad, so it can be hard for some people to measure, but Kuroo is an expert and he can definitively say, from experience, one is worse than the other.

Face to face like this, some of Yaku's bravado quiets, the embarrassment that he was masking as annoyance starts showing its face. Yaku has always been uncomfortable with how much hold Kuroo has over him, and Kuroo can sympathize because honestly, it took him a while to accept the same.

"Do you really think I don't know how lucky I am that you're here?" Kuroo asks. "That you didn't change your mind?"

It's instinctive how he reaches out to touch Yaku's face, to stroke back his hair. He knows the fight isn't quite over yet, and if he was thinking clearly, he wouldn't. 

Yaku closes his eyes at the contact, like he's bearing something painful. Then he sighs a long suffering, defeated sigh, and tips his head up, pressing his lips against Kuroo's.

How long has it been? At least four years for Kuroo, maybe even five for Yaku. They both fall into this easily, tension melting away as they slot together, and Kuroo moans into Yaku's mouth at the discovery that this is still here, still waiting for him, just where they left off. 

"God," Kuroo says, breaking the kiss for just a moment to breath this into Yaku's lips. "I missed this."

"Yeah," Yaku answers back, a little shaken sounding. "Me, too."

Their bodies are shifting to allow for more contact, legs spreading, warmth seeking out warmth, grinding up into it when they find it. 

There's a brief, frank discussion about whether the likelihood of finding lube in the room. They decide on yes, but neither of them want to break apart long enough to find it, and go back to what they're doing, feeling the other person move against them, just the friction and touch enough to make them both go pink-faced from pleasure. 

"Yes, Kuroo," Yaku breathes, and he's absolutely falling apart tonight, legs spread wide, rolling his hips up in a wanton, greedy motion. It's more passive than Kuroo's used to seeing him in bed, but at the same time demanding, _expecting_ Kuroo to give him pleasure, to make him come, and this contradiction gets the blood moving in Kuroo in a way he was not expecting.

"Greedy," Kuroo accuses, even as he does as Yaku asks. 

They're both still fully dressed, it's going to be a mess, but that's fine, because Kuroo's not pulling away from this, not even for a second, not when Yaku answering with a whine, tensing his body in an arch, and doing it so hard he starts to quiver, then come, with a great gasp of air.

Yaku drops heavily to the mattress, moaning in the aftermath softly, and the sound, the smell, the feel, the _reality_ of this has Kuroo nearly there. Yaku starts reaching down to help Kuroo along, but Kuroo shakes his head.

"Just – just lay there," he says. "Just take it."

" _Take it_ ," Yaku repeats, like this is amusing. "Just take Tetsurou-kun's cock?"

"What the – " Kuroo chokes on the words, coming so fast and hard he can't finish. "What the _fuck_ ," he gasps. Yaku's never – has he ever? Done dirty talk? It wasn't – really, actually, Kuroo realizes as his head clears. More like teasing, but it's definitely new. 

Yaku is smirking up at him from the pillow, looking smug, but also pink cheeked, satisfied, and adorable. Kuroo does not stand a chance.

They slowly peel off their uniforms, curling under the blankets nude, switching off the lights. 

"Hey," Kuroo says, a bit suddenly, into the dark, as Yaku settles properly into his arms. "How did the _Intrepid_ integrate the FTL tech into the steering system?"

"It didn't," Yaku says. 

"What?"

"The navigation was preprogramed before launch," Yaku says, taking Kuroo's hand and playing with his fingers almost clinically, like he's checking to validate they're all still here, all in working order. "We had the traditional helm there in case of an emergency, but as far as I know we only had one pilot on board, and they never even stepped onto the bridge."

"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," Kuroo says. "Objects in space aren't exactly fixed."

"I believe the protocol for an incoming collision was to full stop, recalculate the navigation, and launch again," Yaku says. "But there was no input for steering."

"Shit," Kuroo says, laughing a little, not sure how that changes things.

"Why?"

"There's this admiral," Kuroo starts, pulling Yaku up against his chest, settling in. He explains the whole story, from the beginning, waking up, the decision to head back to earth. The hail from UEA, the massive cryo unit, Yamaguchi, Bokuto, and Admiral Oikawa's pet project. He's halfway through when he realizes that Yaku's fallen asleep. 

Kuroo watches him in the silence of the room, petting down his hair fondly. 

He's not sure how Oikawa and Bokuto are going to react to the news about the pilot-free ship, he's not sure if Yaku will want to stay here, in the UEA, and continue to explore space, or retire back to earth. They didn't really have a chance to talk about any of that, but in the moment they feel like unimportant trivialities. Kuroo has secured this, the most important thing. They've proven it: he will follow Yaku, and Yaku will follow him. Yaku will wait for him in the meantime, and Kuroo will wait the same. As far as they have to go, and as long as it takes. 

Anything else, he can play by ear.


End file.
